HOTEL WHERE 2 DIED GETS 300 BLANKETS

New York City sent 300 blankets to a West Side welfare hotel yesterday, after two elderly tenants died in their icy rooms Tuesday when there was no heat in the building and when outside temperatures ranged from 1 degree below zero to 12 above.

There was still no heat yesterday at the hotel, which has 40 housing code violations pending, 23 of which are considered serious.

The blankets were from a city stockpile of 5,000 blankets set aside for emergency use, and had a social worker assigned to the hotel known of their existence, the lives of the two men might have been saved.

“Had the social workers come to their own agency with the problem of inadequate blankets we could have helped,” said Robert Jorgen, who heads the city Office of Special Housing Services. However, he said only a few city employees, other than himself, had known of the existence of the blankets.

Mr. Jorgen said the 5,000 blankets were part of a city stockpile reserved for years for emergencies such as a flood or a civil disturbance.

He said 300 of the regular blankets, in addition to 100 electric blankets, would be sent to the hotel, which was still without heat yesterday.

He said the electric blankets had been made available in part by a donation by the building owner, Daniel Gold, who lives in Miami and who also has a home on Long Island.

City records indicate that the owner of the hotel, at 1649 Amsterdam Avenue near 141st Street, is $53,000 in arrears in taxes.

There are 134 tenants and 128 rooms in the hotel, according to Mr. Jorgen. Albert Blue, the building's manager, said the cost of a small one‐room apartment was $152 a month to welfare recipients and $121 a month to Social Security recipients.

Earlier Problem Cited

During a telephone interview, Mr. Blue said the tenants had had to go without heat for much of the winter because of problems with the boiler.

“The city ordered us to upgrade the boiler because of pollution and we did it at a cost of $8,000,” he said. “And it hasn't worked properly since.”